The Hub

The Hub will be a safe, friendly, warm, and secure home away from home for people with life-limiting illnesses. The hub will provide carers with an opportunity to take a break from their usual caring roles. Set in beautiful grounds, and with all the facilities you’d expect in a home-like environment, the Hub will provide a warm and peaceful place for those with a life-limiting illness to spend a few hours or a few days. Carers can rest easy knowing their loved one is being looked after and supported while they themselves get the rest or help they need.

THE BIG PICTURE

The Grattan Institute, in their report Dying Well, found that 70% of people faced with a life-limiting illness want to die at home supported by their families and loved ones. They do not want to die in a hospital. Nationally, however, only 14% of people achieve their wish to die at home.

WHERE IS THE GAP?

Supporting people with a life-limiting illness, and supporting their wish to die at home, means we need to better support the family and loved ones who are their carers. From time-to-time, these carers need a break from their responsibilities – whether to recharge their batteries or to attend to other personal and family responsibilities.

Without a break, these families can reach a crisis point, where they can’t cope anymore, and their loved one ends up in hospital. This is not what the person, nor the family, wants and is not the best use of health services which are already under pressure.

WHY NOW?

The simple answer – we haven’t had the ability to. We need to change that. Supporting people with a life-limiting illness to die at home means we need to better support the family and loved ones who are looking after them. The ACT Legislative Assembly has heard, through the Select Committee on End of Life Choices in the ACT, of the pressures facing our palliative care system.

This issue will only become more acute given the ageing of the population. We have to act now.

WHAT CAN YOU DO?

Buy a brick or donate to help us to turn our vision into a reality. With your support, we can help those with a life-limiting illness die well; as they wish to.